Journal of a Residence among the Negroes in the West Indies

by Matthew Gregory Lewis

  FEBRUARY 17.

  Some of the free people of colour possess slaves, cattle, and other property left them by their fathers, and are in good circumstances; but few of them are industrious enough to increase their possessions by any honest exertions of their own. As to the free blacks, they are almost uniformly lazy and improvident, most of them half-starved, and only anxious to live from hand to mouth. Some lounge about the highways with pedlar-boxes stocked with various worthless baubles ; others keep miserable stalls provided with rancid butter, damaged salt pork, and other such articles: and these they are always willing to exchange for stolen rum and sugar, which they secretly tempt the negroes to pilfer from their proprietors ; but few of them ever endeavour to earn their livelihood creditably. Even those who profess to be tailors, carpenters, or coopers, are, for the most part, careless, drunken, and dissipated, and never take pains sufficient to attain any dexterity in their trade. As to a free negro hiring himself out for plantation -labour, no instance of such a thing was ever known in Jamaica; and probably no price, however great, would be considered by them as a sufficient temptation.

  FEBRUARY 18.

  The Africans and Creoles hate each other most cordially. Yesterday, in the field, a girl who had taken some slight offence at something said to her by a young boy, immediatley struck him with the bill with which she was cutting canes. Luclily his loose wrapper saved him from the blow, and on his running away she threw the bill after him in his flight with all the fury and malice of a fiend. This same vixen, during my former visit, had been punished for having her teeth in the hand of one of the other girls, and nearly biting her thumb off, and on hearing of this fresh instance of devilism, I asked her mother "how she came to have so bad a daughter, when all her sons were so mild and good?" " Oh massa," answered she, " the girl's father was a Guinea-man."

  FEBRUARY 19.

  Neptune came this morning to request that the name of his son, Oscar, might be changed to that of Julius, which (it seems) had been that of his own father. The child, he said, had always been weakly, and he was persuaded that its ill-health proceeded frin his deceased grand-father's being displeased, because it had not been called after him. The other day, too, a woman, who had a child sick in the hospital, begged me to change its name for any other which might please me best--she cared not what ; but she was sure that it would never do well so long as it should be called Lucia. Perhaps, this prejudice respecting the power of names produces in some measure their unwillingness to be christened. They find no change produced in them, except the alteration if their namem and hence they conclude that this name contains in it some secret power ; while, on the other hand, theu conceive that the ghosts of their ancestors cannot fail to be offended at their abandoning an appellation, either hereditary in the family or given by themselves. It is another negro prejudice, that the eructation of the breath of a sucking child has something in it venomous ; and frequently nursing mothers, on showing the doctor a swelled breast, will very gravely and positively attribute it to the infant's having broken wind while hanging on the nipple.

  FEBRUARY 23.

  The law-charges in Jamaica have lately been regulated by the House of Assembly ; and, by all accounts ( except that of the lawyers), it was full time that something should be done on the subject. A case was mentioned to me of an estate litigated between several parties. At length a decision was given: the estate was sold for 16,000l.; but the lawyer's claim must always be the first discharged, and as this amounted to more than 16,000l., the lawyer found himself in possession of the estate. This was the fable of AEsop's oyster with a vengeance.

  FEBRUARY 25.

  A negro, named Adam, has long been the terror of my whole estate. He was accused of being an Obeah-man ; and persons notorious for the practice of Obeah, and who were afterwards convicted and transported, had been found concealed in his house. He was strongly suspected of having poisoned more than twelve negroes, men and women; and, having been displaced by my former trustee from being principal governor, in revenge be put poison into his water-jar. Luckily he was observed by one of the house-servants, who impeached him, and prevented the intended mischief. For this offence he ought to have been given up to justice ; but being brother of the trustee's mistress, she found means to get him off, after undergoing a long confinement in the stocks. I found him, at my first visit, living in a state of utter excommunication : I tried what reasoning with him could effect, reconciled him to his companions, treated him with marked kindness, and he promised solemnly to behave well during my absence. However, instead in attributing my lenity to a wish to reform him, his pride and confidence in his own talents and powers of deception made him attribute the indulgence shown him to his having obtained an influence over my mind. This he determined to employ to his own purposes upon my return ; so he set about forming a conspiracy against Sully, the present chief governor, and boasted, on various estates in the neighbourhood, that on my arrival he would take care to get Sully broke, and himself substituted in his place. In the meanwhile he quarrelled and fought right and left ; and I now found the whole estate in an uproar about him. no less than three charges of assault, with intent to kill, were preferred against him. In a fit of jealousy he had endeavoured to strangle Marlborough with the thong of whip, and had nearly affected his purpose before he could be dragged away; he had knocked down Nato in some trifling dispute, and while the man was senseless had thrown him into the river to drown him ; and having taken offence at a poor weak creature called Old Rachael, on meeting her by accident he struck her to the ground, beat her with a supplejack, stamped upon her belly, and begged her to be assured of his intention ( as he eloquently worded it) " to kick her guts out." The breeding mothers also accused him of having been the cause of the poisoning a particular spring, from which they were in the habit of fetching water for their children, as Adam on that morning had been seen near the spring without having any business there, and he had been heard to caution his little daughter against drinking water from it that day, although be stoutly denied both circumstances. Into the bargain, my head blacksmith, being perfectly well at five o'clock, was found by his son dead in his bed at eight; and it was known that he had lately had a dispute with Adam, who on that day had made it up with him, and had invited him to drink, although it was not certain that his offer had been accepted. He had, moreover, threatened the lives of many of the best negroes. Two of the cooks declared that he severally directed them to dress Sully's food apart, and had given them powders to mix with it. The first to whom he aplied refused positively ; the second he treated with liquor, and when she had drunk he gave her the poison, with instructions how to use it: being a timid creature, she did not dare to object, so threw away the powder privately, and pretended that it had been administered : but, finding no effect produced by it, Adam gave her a second powder, at the same time bidding her remember the liquor which she had swallowed, and which he assured her would effect her own destruction, through the force of Obeah, unless she prevented it by sacrificing his enemy in her stead. The poor creature still threw away the powder, but the strength of imagination brought upon her a serious malady, and it was not till several weeks that she recovered from the effects of her fears.

  The terror thus produced was universal throughout the estate, abd Sully and several other principal negroes requested me to remove them to my property in St. Thomas', as their lives were not safe while breathing the same air with Adam. However, it appeared a more salutary measure to remove Adam himself ; but all the poisoning charges either went no further than strong suspicion, or (any more than the assaults) were not liable by the laws of Jamaica to be punished, except by flogging or temporary imprisonment, which would only have returned him to the estate with increased resentment against those to whom he should ascribe his sufferings, however deserved. However, on searching his house, a musket, with a plentiful accompaniment of powder and ball, was found concealed, as also a considerable quantity of materials for the practice of Obeah: the possession of
either of the above articles (if the musket is without the consent of the proprietor) authorizes the magistrates to pronounce a sentence of transportation. In consequence of this discovery, Adam was immediately committed to gaol ; a slave court was summoned and to-day a sentence of transportation from the island was pronounced, after a trial of three hours. As to the man's guilt, the jury entertained no doubt, but the difficulty was to restrain the verdict to transportation. We produced nothing which could possibly affect his life; for although perhaps no offender ever better deserved hanging, yet I confess my being weak-minded enough to entertain doubts whether hanging or other capital punishment ought to be inflicted for any offence whatever. However, although I did my best to prevent Adam from being hanged, it was no easy matter to prevent his hanging himself. The Obeah ceremonies always commenced with what is called by the negroes the " Myal dance." This is intended to remove any doubt of the chief Obeah-man's supernatural powers; and, in the course of it, he undertakes to show his art by killing one of the persons present, whom he pitches upon for that purpose. He sprinkles various powders over the devoted victim, blows upon him, and dances round him, obliges him to drink a liquor prepared for the occasion ; and, finally, the sorcerer and his assistants seize him and whirl him rapidly round and round till the man loses his senses, and falls on the ground, to all appearance and the belief of the spectators, a perfect corpse. The chief Myal-man then utters loud shrieks, rushes out of the house with wild and frantic gestures, and conceals himself in some neighbouring wood. At the end of two or three hours he returns with a large bundle of herbs, from some of which he squeezes the juice into the mouth of the dead person ; with others he anoints his eyes.and stains the tips of his fingers; accompanying the ceremony with a great variety of grotesque actions, and chanting all the while something between a song and a howl, while the assistants, hand-in-hand, dance slowly round them in a circle, stamping the ground loudly with their feet to keep time with his chant. A considerable time elapses before the desired effect is produced, but at length the corpse gradually recovers animation, rises from the ground perfectly recovered, and the Myal dance concludes. After this proof of his power, those who wish to be revenged upon their enemies apply to the sorcerer for some of the same powder which produced apparent death upon their companion; and, as they never employ the means used for his recovery, of course the powder once administered never fails to be lastingly fatal. It must be superfluous to mention that the Myal-man on these.occasions substitutes a poison for a narcotic.

  Now, among other suspicious articles found in Adam's hut, there was a string of beads, of various sizes, shapes, and colours arranged in a form peculiar to the performance of the Obeahman in the Myal dance. Their use was so well known, that Adam on his trial sis not even attempt to deny that they could serve for no purpose nut the practice of Obeah ; but he endeavoured to refure their being his own property, and with this view he began to narrate the means by which he had become possessed of them. He said that they belonged to Fox ( a negro who was lately transported ), from whom he had taken them at a Myal dance held on the estate of Dean's Valley ; but as the assistants at one of these dances are by law condemned to death equally with the principal performer, the court had the humanity to interrupt his confession of having been present on such an occasionm and thus saved him from criminating himself so deeply as to render a capital punishment inevitable. I understand that he was quite unabashed and at his ease the whole time ; upon hearing his sentence he only said very coolly, " Well ! I can't help it !" turned himself round and walked out of the court.

  This fellow was a great hypocrite. When on my arrival he gave me a letter, filled with the grossest lies respecting the trustee, and every creditable negro on the estate, he took care to sign it by the name which he had lately received in baptism: and, in his defence at the bar, to prove his probity of character and purity of manners, he informed the court that for some time past he had been learning to read, for the sole purpose of learning the Lord's Prayer. The nick-name by which he was generally known among the negroes in this part of the country was Buonaparte, and he always appeared to exult in the appellation. Once condemned, the marshal is bound, under a heavy penalty, to see him shipped from off the island before the expiration of six weeks; and probably he will be sent to Cuba. He is a finelooking man, between thirty and forty, square built, and of great bodily strength ; and his countenance equally expresses intelligence and malignity. The sum allowed me for him is one hundred pounds currency, which is scarcely a third of his worth as a labourer, but is the highest value which a jary is permitted to award.

  MARCH 1. (Sunday.)

  Last night the negroes of Friendship took it into their ingenious heads to pay me a compliment of an extremely inconvenient nature. They thought that it would be highly proper to treat me with a nightly serenade, just by way of showing their enjoyment on my return ; and, accordingly, a large body of them arrived at my doors about midnight, dressed out in their best clotbes, and accompanied with drums, rattles, and their whole orchestra of abominable instruments, determined to pass the whole night in singing and dancing under my windows. Luckily, my negrogovernors heard what was going forwards, and knowing my taste a little better than my visitors, they hastened to asure them of my being in bed and asleep, and with much difficulty persuaded them to remve into my village. Here they contented themselves with making a noise for the greatest part of the night ; and the nest morning, after coming up to see me at breakfast, they went away quietly. One of them only remained, to inquire particularly after Lady H---, as her mother had been her nurse, and she was very particular in her inquiries as to her health, her children, their ages, and names. When she went away I gave her a plentiful provision of bread, butter, plantains, and cold ham from the breakfast-table, part of which she sat down to eat, intending, as she said, to carry the rest to her piccaniny at home. But, in half an hour after, she made her appearance again, saying she was come to take leave of me, and hoped I would give her a bit to buy tobacco. I gave her a maccaroni, which occasioned a great squall of delight. Oh! since I had given her so much, she would not buy tobacco, but a fowl ; and then, when I returned, she would bring me a chicken from it for my dinner; that is, if she could keep the other negroes from stealing it from her--a piece of extraordinary good luck of which she seemed to entertain but slender hopes. At length off she set ; but she had scarcely gone above ten yards from the house when she turned back, and was soon at my writing-table once more, with a " Well! here me come to massa again! " So then she said that she had meant to eat part of the provisions which I had given her, and carry home the rest to her boy; but that really it was so good she could not help going on eating and eating till she had eaten the whole, and now she wanted another bit of cold ham to carry home to her child, And then she should away perfectly contented. I ordered Cubina to give her a hunch of it, and Mrs. Phillis at length took her departure for good and all.

  MARCH 4.

  I set out to visit my estate in St. Thomas's in the East, called Hordley. It is at the very furthest extremity of the island, and never was there such a journey. Something disagreeable happened at every step. My accidents commenced before I had accomplished ten miles from my own house ; for in passing along a narrow shelf of rock which overhangs the sea near Blue-fields, a pair of young blood-horses in my carriage took fright at the roaring of the waves which dashed violently against them, and twice nearly overturned me. On the second occasion one of them actually fell down into the water, the the off-wheel flew up into the air, and the curricle remained suspended, balancing backwards and forwards, like Mahomet's coffin. Luckily, time was allowed the horse to recover his legs ; down came the whell once more on terra firma, and on we went again. We slept at Cashew ( an estate near Lacovia ), and the next morning at daylight proceeded to cllimb the Bogr. a mountain so difficult of ascent that everyone had pronounced the attempt to be hopeless with horses so young as mine; but those horses were my only ones, and therefore I was obliged to make the trial.
The road is bordered by tremendous precipices for about twelve miles; the path is so narrow that a servant must always be sent on before to make any carts, which may be descending, stop in recesses hollowed out for this express purpose; and the cartmen are obliged to sound their shells repeatedly, in order to give each other timely warning. The chief danger, however, proceeds from the steepness of the road, which in some places will not permit the waggons to stop, however well their conductors may be inclined; then down they come, drawn by twelve or fourteen, or sometimes sixteen oxen, sweeping everything before them ; and any carriage unlucky enough to find itself in their course must infallibly be dashed over the precipice. To-day, it really appeared as if all the estates in the island had agreed to send their produce by this particular road ; the shells formed a complete chorus, and sounded incessantly during our whole passage of the mountain; and at one time there was a very numerous accumulation of carts and oxen, in consequence of my carriage coming to a complete stop. As we were ascending,--" It is very well," said Mr. Hill, who was travelling with me, " that we did not come by this road three months sooner. I remember about that time travelling it on horseback, and an enormous tree had fallen over the path, and hung so low that a chaise with a canopy could not have passed ; but , of course, the obstacle must now be removed : if I remember right, this must have been the very spot.....and, as I hope to live, yonder is the very tree still !" And so it proved : although three months had elapsed, the impediment had been suffered to remain in unmolested possession of the road, and to pass my carriage under it proved an absolute impossibility. after much discussion, and many fruitless attempts, we at length succeeded in unscewing the wheels, lifting off the body, which we carried aalong, and then built the curricle up again on the opposite side of the tree. However, by one means or other, we found ourselves at the bottom of the mountain ; but the fatal tree, and the delay occasioned by taking unavoidable shelter from the tremendous storms of rain, had cost us so much time that night surprised us when we were still eight miles distant from our destined inn. The night was dark as night could be ; no moon, no stars, nor any light except the flashing of myriads of fire-flies, which, flapping in the faces of the young horses, frightened them and made them rear. The raod, too, was full of water-trenched, precipices, and deep and dangerous holes. As to the gorund, it was quite invisible, and we had no means of proceeding with any chance of safety except by making some of the servants lead the horses, while the others went before us to explore the way, while they cried out every moment, " Take care ; a little to the left, or you will slipp into that wate-trench--a little to the right, or you will tumble over that precipice." Into the bargain, there was neither inn nor gentleman's house within reach ; and thus we proceeded crawling along at a foot's pace for five wretched miles, when we at length stopped to beg a shelter for the night at a small estate called Porous. By thistime it was midnight--all the family was gone to bed--the gates were all locked ; during which I sat in an open carriage, perspiration streaming down from my head to my feet, through vexationm impatience, and fatigue, while the nightdew fell heavy and the night-breeze blew keen ; which (as I had frequently been assured) was the very best recipe possible for getting a Jamaica fever. On such I counted, both for myself and my white servant, when I at length laid myself sown in a bed at Porous ; but, to my equal surprise and satisfactio, we both rose the next morning without feeling the slightest inconvenience. On Friday, the 5th, I eached Spanish Town ; and the next night slept at Kingston.